love to paint

When a child is born, we love them so dearly.  We want the best for them and not the worst.  We want to guarantee that they will turn out to be healthy and loving adults someday.  We want to guarantee, as much as we can by what we do, that they will learn to make the right choices and choose God. When I was reading God, Marriage, and Family by Andreas Kostenberger, I appreciated his point that as parents we turn to this book or that book searching for a parenting philosophy or method that will guarantee that our kids will turn out the way we hope they will.  In reality, there is no guarantee.  We cannot guarantee by anything we do that our children will come to know the Lord or that they will be healthy, well balanced adults. But, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try our best.  It doesn't mean we don't need to love them well.  It doesn't mean that we aren't responsible for being the best parents we can be to our children. Let me pause and paint a ...

What is the point of parenting?  What is our goal?  Is it to have well behaved kids?  Is it to have kids we are proud of?  Is it so that we can live through them?  Are they the point?  Are they supposed to be the center of our lives?   Here is what three books on my desk say: Tim Kimmel says in his book Grace-Based Parenting that we are to equip our children well so that they can move into adulthood as vital members of the human race...(he) didn't say "as vital members of the Christian community." We need to have kids that can be sent off to the most hostile universities, toil in the greediest work environments...and...not be the least bit intimidated by their surroundings.  Furthermore, they need to be engaged in the lives of people in their culture, gracefully representing Christ's love inside these desperate surroundings." p. 9 Here's another author's way of putting what the goal of parenting is:  to raise great kids.  A gre...